


on loving boys with borrowed wings

by thepaperbones



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Break Up, College, Dark Wilbur Soot, Drug Use, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Homophobia, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Kissing in the Rain, Love Confessions, M/M, Nicknames, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Phone Calls & Telephones, Pining, Recreational Drug Use, References to Drugs, Social Anxiety, Stoner GeorgeNotFound, Stoner Wilbur Soot, Underage Drug Use, WHY ARE HALF THE ADDITIONAL TAGS ON THIS FIC ABOUT DRUGS PLEASE, no beta we die like ranboo at the hands of caesario, social anxiety is the only thing fueling my writing anymore
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-26
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:47:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28335636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepaperbones/pseuds/thepaperbones
Summary: Dream’s Cassandra of Troy all over again. If actions were louder than words, he’d have screamed his throat bloody in cautious texts and stony walks home- there’s longing written in the gentle touch of his hand on George’s sleeve.“Don’t go,” Dream pleads in his mind, even as he reaches out for a hand he knows is pulling away.“Dream,” murmurs the George of his imagination, “I was never here.”in which dream chases after the sun just to hold it in his hands and is inevitably torched
Relationships: Clay | Dream & GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF), Clay | Dream/GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF), GeorgeNotFound & Wilbur Soot
Comments: 9
Kudos: 18





	on loving boys with borrowed wings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lieyuu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lieyuu/gifts).



> fic for @lieyuu merry christmas ily thank you for writing the most incredible words ever and for giving me the motivation to make the words go tn. it is 35 minutes past actual christmas but i hope everyone reading this had a good year! i wrote dialogue and shit this time around i am progressing so much. this fic is a wip i've been sitting on for a while largely inspired by 1) interactions with an ex who did copious amounts of drugs hope he's doing well rn and 2) a telephone call with a girl who i cherish very much

For as long as he can remember, Dream has been running. He’d been a cross-country runner in middle school, back when he was just a nobody kid in a world that was too old and too large for him, and he knows the feeling better than anyone else - the breathless, explosive gasps for air as you kick up dust on an unforgiving road where it’s just you running from nothing and everything at the same time. Dream considers himself a resident of that little pocket of universe where everything tunnel-visions to the next few feet and your heart thrums like it’s extra alive. 

They used to watch him when he ran - he was someone special and brilliant and important. He was not Clay the nobody kid but Dream, the last gasp of moonlight specters melting away as the sun came up, and they loved him for it. Dream was a winner and a champion - a thousand medals and a few trophies had secured his status as such. 

Then he transitions into high school in a new country, where everything feels suffocatingly distant and every stare is a lit match pinned to his back. The glances and the whispers, like so many millipedes wriggling under his skin, put him on edge. Because to this new world of people, he isn’t Dream, the illustrious golden boy. Here, he’s just Clay, another little speck of life along the earth’s skin waiting to be extinguished and replaced. 

George makes things better in a way that Dream can never explain. If you asked him, Dream would be hard-pressed to recall exactly how they met, as all good friendships are. To this day, he only remembers a feeling of immense warmth and peace upon first meeting George, and that was enough for him. 

George is no athlete, nor is he a scholar of mathematics, but Dream believes with all his heart that George is Apollo incarnate, with his music. If he’d had a choice, he could easily spend all of eternity watching George coax sweet notes out of his guitar or sing melodies that neither of them knows the exact words to. 

The only thing he really plays better than the guitar is Dream’s heart, probably, purely because of the way his smile resonates through Dream’s core, the way George haunts his thoughts long after they part their separate ways until every part of his soul is consumed with _GeorgeGeorgeGeorgeGeorge_. Sometimes late at night when it’s only him, staring at the moon-kissed ceiling of his room and choking on feelings of utter infatuation, the only thing he can think about is holding George, kissing him, burning him until all that’s left is ashes and they have scorched the earth.

Dream meets George’s friends too - he didn’t have it in him to say no, not when George was tugging him along, beaming like he had sunshine lacing his smile. 

The first time he meets Wilbur, Dream is struck by the immediate sense of how he is George and Not George. 

“Hey, Clay,” Wilbur smirks, waving a lazy hand in the air, and Dream can already tell. Wilbur reeks of trembling hands, crushed pill lines, and pale smoke, and his soft accent is like George’s but so, so different. Where George’s voice is open and light-flooded sunflower fields, Wilbur speaks like the serpent of the Garden of Eden, deceptively tempting and insidious. 

Dream returns Wilbur’s greeting with a tight smile, and his mouth is painfully dry as he watches them write a song, plucking out spider-silk melodies. 

He thinks back now and wishes he’d done anything to stop them from careening down that dangerous, dark path. As it is, the only thing he can do is play spectator - Dream’s Cassandra of Troy all over again. If actions were louder than words, he’d have screamed his throat bloody in cautious texts and stony walks home- there’s longing written in the gentle touch of his hand on George’s sleeve. 

“Don’t go,” Dream pleads in his mind, even as he reaches out for a hand he knows is pulling away. 

“Dream,” murmurs the George of his imagination, “I was never here.”

And he’s never hated his nickname more vehemently, especially when he wakes up with something more emotional than morning dew dotting his lower lashes. Dream’s so fucking screwed, and he knows it when his mind manifests George at night, skeleton-gaunt and crying white powder, aglow with city lights like he’s already among the ranks of Hell’s favorite sinners. 

Dream, Dream, Dream, whispers this not-George, and Clay’s heart stops every time. 

George stops talking to Dream now, and they both know what’s occupying his time instead - cocaine lines and smoking weed and generally being on a different plane of reality - with _Wilbur_ of all people.

George - the real one - climbs in through his window one night with fragrant smoke threading through his hair, and it all begins to unravel. His eyes, red-rimmed, shine not like stars but with the glassy sheen of a dead man walking. 

“George,” mumbles Dream, mind hazy with sleep, “what’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong?” George parrots in a loose voice that isn’t entirely his, and this snaps Dream awake like he’s been stabbed in the chest. 

Dream appraises this new George. He’s not sure what to feel about him.

“Are - are you high?” Dream asks. 

George gives him a murky smile. 

“Wilbur and I were just messing around. Don’t worry about me, darling,” he says, and God - Dream wishes George wouldn’t call him that, because his heart constricts like all the air’s been sucked out of the room. 

He worries his lip, and maybe this means something to George, because he clambers from his perch on the windowsill to Dream’s bed and crouches at the foot of it. Suddenly, they’re so close - too close, maybe.

George does not seem to share this sentiment, or maybe he chooses to ignore it. Dream can’t tear his eyes away, even as the distance between them becomes marginally less and his brain is sounding alarm bells. 

“Do you know what you do to me?” George asks, with a voice that’s layered with hunger. And then he’s leaning closer, closer, twisting Dream’s heart.

“Stop,” Dream gasps. George pulls back like he’s been slapped. He’s confused, and maybe a little hurt. 

“Clay -”

Stop. That’s all he has to do. He just has to breathe, but it’s like his lungs have been flash frozen. 

“Please leave,” Dream whispers. 

“I’m sorry, I thought -”

“ _Leave_ ,” Dream begs him, and George is definitely hurt now. He turns to climb through the window, and he doesn’t look back. 

It’s colder all of a sudden. Dream tries to go back to sleep and finds that he can’t. 

He picks up his phone to text George. 

I love you, Dream types but does not send. His heart aches. 

Dream doesn’t see George until that next big incident, and when he does, he almost wishes he hadn’t. 

Because it’s 2:43 AM, and George calls him. Dream’s 100% sure George isn’t sober at all, but he picks up anyway. 

“Cla - Dream, darling,” George greets him. His voice is shaky, like he’s been crying. 

Dream can’t speak for a second, overwhelmed as he is. 

“I’m not going to speak to you while you’re high,” he whispers into the phone. 

“Stop _running_ ,” George responds. “God, just say you hate me.”

“What?”

“Just say you hate me. Do it.”

Dream’s well aware that this is a terrible time to be having this conversation but he’s so tired of waiting for the right time.

“Don’t you get it?” he bites out - Dream knows that this is where it all falls apart but he can’t stop himself - “I love you.”

George is silent, paralyzingly so. Dream wonders if he’s struggling to breathe all of a sudden, too. 

“I love you too,” George says, fiercely, like the words are ripping themselves out of him. “God, I love you like I was made just for loving you and I can’t fucking stop loving you.”

And then the night becomes a blur of Dream getting in his car, stopping in a street in a suburb neither of them knows, and _George._ It’s raining, he remembers realizing, it’s raining and I am here, now, with the love of my goddamn life. 

George kisses him in the rain, under a half-broken streetlight, and he kisses like he is drowning and Dream is the last thing keeping his head above water. 

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! leave kudos and comments maybe if you enjoyed this. thanks as always to @lieyuu and @fensandmarshes check out their dnf fics for pure goddamn fluff written in ways that would make will shakespeare jealous. consider yelling at me on twitter @thepaperbones1 and checking out my other works!!! <3


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